The dawn didn’t bring light to the Plains of Ash. It merely dyed the falling flakes from charcoal to the curdled grey of skimmed milk.
Ren Vale woke with both hands clawing at the wagon bed.
His stomach didn’t feel empty. Emptiness was a clean, hollow thing. A simple lack of bread that a laborer might sleep through. What clawed inside Ren’s ribs was an active, hungry fire. His gastric lining felt as though it had been painted with liquid burning lime powder and set alight, the acid chewing into smooth muscle with the relentless crunch of beetles burrowing through timber.
He rolled over the sideboard, dropped onto his hands and knees in the grey powder, and gagged.
Nothing came up except a string of violet-tinged bile that hissed where it touched the frozen dark rock beneath the dust. Ten years of borrowed body age sat across his collarbones like wet sandbags, every sinew throbbing with the dull ache of a clerk who had spent three decades sleeping on damp stone.
“Breathe through your teeth, little brother,” a voice murmured.
Brother Ren knelt in the dust, scarred hands steady despite the raw purple lesions running along his wrists. Between his palms, the Saint held a battered wooden bowl. A curl of thin steam carried the warm fragrance of boiled barley and very thirsty wild turnip roots.
